Your Back Pages: Readers Share Dylan Memories

This week, we published an article about the new Bob Dylan Archive in Tulsa, Okla. The lyrics, letters, photographs and other ephemera among the more than 6,000 items in the archive represent decades of American history. Arguably just as important as Mr. Dylan’s items are the memories carried by generations of fans. So we asked readers to share something from their own personal Dylan archives: the vinyl copy of “Blonde on Blonde” that survived moves, marriages and children; the ticket stub that conjures mental images of an inspiring performance; the bootlegged recording from the show.

Along with interesting images submitted by readers were some great stories. A teacher who used Mr. Dylan’s writing in her poetry classes received a rare audience with him after a concert, when he signed a book of his poems. A visit with Mr. Dylan’s mother. A bottle of bourbon from a backstage dressing room.

Here’s a sampling of the responses, which were edited for length and clarity.

Image

An image submitted by Rowland Scherman.

“I made a snapshot of Bob Dylan in concert [at the Coliseum] in Washington, D.C., in 1965. From my seat I could visualize a great shot: There was the blue spot backlighting Dylan’s hair. I bluffed the security guards to allow me backstage for a few seconds, telling them I was shooting for Life magazine. This wasn’t exactly true, but inasmuch as I was a freelancer working for them quite a bit, I had enough confidence to say so. I made a few frames using a Nikon F and a 300mm lens, with High Speed Ektachrome.

Days later, I took the resulting images to John Berg at Columbia Records. I placed the meager stack of slides on his desk. John picked up the first one and said, ‘That’s the next cover.’ It all happened in less time than it takes to tell this story. It was used as the album cover for ‘Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits.’ A few months later, John telegraphed to say we had won a Grammy Award for 1967’s best album cover. I am so proud that our iconic image graces the cover of this seminal album.”

— Rowland Scherman, Orleans, Mass.

“My wife has a postcard. On one side is printed ‘I’m drunk, what’s your excuse?’ On the other are the autographs of Dylan and Joan Baez. She got this gem at a concert in Connecticut around 1964, when Bob came up to her and some friends as they were walking to the venue and asked for a bite of her hamburger.”

— Trent Jones, New York City

Image

An image submitted by Peggy DeStefano.

“As a teenager, I acquired the habit of reading the NYT on Sunday ... religiously! On this particular Sunday — October 18, 1964 — I tore out an advertisement (from Columbia Records) for the newest Dylan album, ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan.’ I still have the full-page picture of Dylan (with the thumb-sized print of the album cover) and the quote (never directly attributed to Dylan through his writings): “Yes it is I who is knocking at your door, if it is you inside who hears the noise.”

A little faded and somewhat tattered, this piece (preserved only in a clear plastic box frame) has followed me from the NY Island to California and back again.”

— Peggy DeStefano, Enfield, N.H.

Image

An image submitted by B.D. Cohen.

“On my office wall I have framed two images of Dylan that I took from the balcony of the Hartford Atheneum on Oct. 30, 1965. At the time I was a student in a minute boarding school in Connecticut, and my fellow seniors and I had persuaded the administration to let us arrange for a bus, order tickets, and make a pilgrimage across the state to hear Dylan. Shortly after I took the photos, they ran in the four-page student newspaper, of which I was an editor, and that was the end of them. But about 10 years ago, an envelope arrived in the mail from a high school classmate, containing two tiny prints of photos he had taken of the photos that ran in the newspaper. I scanned them, worked them in Photoshop and now they live on my office wall. And on the mat, under the images, I have the quote, ‘He not busy being born is busy dying.’ Words to live by at 70, or any other age for that matter.”

— B. D. Cohen, Cambridge, Mass.

Image

An image submitted by Michael Kennedy.

“All I have is his mother’s autograph written on stationery from the store where she worked in Hibbing, Minn., in 1967. When I was 18, on a dare, I hitchhiked to Hibbing from Marquette, Mich. I got to Hibbing, went to a phone booth, and looked up Abe Zimmerman to get the address. Then I walked over to the Zimmerman home, knocked on the door and was crushed to realize nobody was home. Looking in the window of the door, I could see Bob and his brother David’s high school graduation photos on a piano. I went next door and asked if that was the home of the parents of ‘Bob Dylan, the folk singer.’ A patient woman said yes, and that they were at work. She then said she’d drive me downtown to where Mrs. Zimmerman worked. I walked into the store and a charming woman, obviously Dylan’s mom, asked if she could help me. I explained who I was and why I was there. She and I spoke for about 45 minutes. I remember she always talked about Bob and David, his brother, equally.

Also, like anybody’s mother, she defended him. ‘Bobby has that song, “All I Want To Do Is Be Friends” or something like that. And it’s true! He just wants to be friends with people!’ At one point she said, ‘Does your mother know you’re here?’ I said no, and she frowned. ‘You should call your mother once you and I are done talking. Bobby always called me wherever he was.’ I said I would. We talked about how Bob was doing, the fact that he was still having headaches from his motorcycle accident a year before. I asked for his address and she smiled, ‘I’m sorry, but Bobby doesn’t have an address.’ We both laughed. At one point she said she should give me her autograph. ‘Nobody is going to believe you did this.’ So I now have that autograph, and a memory of a charming woman who had the patience to talk to a kid who stuck his thumb out on a road one Saturday morning.”

— Michael Kennedy, Portland, Ore.

Image

An image submitted by Flip Brown.

“At the age of 16 I spent three weeks in Chicago on a summer study program, and at an ’underground’ record store I purchased a copy of the first Dylan bootleg, known at the ‘Great White Wonder.’ While there were no liner notes or descriptions, I was able to figure out that a number of cuts were with the Band, in what would later be known as ‘The Basement Tapes.’ The idea that I had a noncommercial, secret stash of wisdom was quite powerful. I still have that album to this day.”

— Flip Brown, Burlington, Vt.

“In 1985, my wife and I were flying back to New York from a trip to Minneapolis. Mr. Dylan and his son [were] seated in the row in front of us and a half-curtain divided our seats in economy and his in the last row of first-class. All during the flight Mr. Dylan wrote in a small notebook. It felt to us that everyone on the plane was curious to read what was on his mind. At one point, he got up and went to the restroom in the back of the plane. He took the notebook with him.”

— Jim Anderson, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Image

An image submitted by Lynette Westendorf.

“My first recording of Bob Dylan was a 45 r.p.m. record of ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ with a flip side of ‘The Gates of Eden.' I was a kid in growing up on a farm in Rupert, Idaho, and I listened to that music over and over until I knew every word and every turn of melody. I was already taking piano and organ lessons at the time, and Dylan’s music most certainly contributed to my own choice of living a life of music.”

— Lynette Westendorf, Winthrop, Wash.

“Among some good stuff, I have the media kit from Bob Dylan’s Kennedy Center honors. I was working for a news agency at the time. After a ceremony at the White House before the show, I happened to notice him leaving through the North Portico. I asked him if he had ever been to the White House before. In the somewhat goofy, borscht belt humor mode he’s been known for over the last few decades, he replied, pointing: ‘There it is, right there.’”

— Pedro, Washington, D.C.

Image

An image submitted by Glen Worthey.

“A lovely little anthology of Bulgarian translations of Dylan songs, published in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 1984. The title is ‘Поети с китара: Боб Дилън’ (‘Poets with Guitars: Bob Dylan’), and the songs (and poems) are translated from Dylan’s 1974 ‘Writings and Drawings.' There’s an original foreword (‘I Will Sing Until the Final Moment’) and afterword (‘Chimes of Freedom’) by the translators Leda Mileva and Nikolai Popov. The purple hardback is about 9 inches square, with a fourfold poster and a 45 r.p.m. disc with ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ tucked in a pocket inside the back cover.”

— Glen Worthey, Los Altos, Calif.

“I have a page from his high school teacher apologizing for talking in class and signed by Bobby Zimmerman, as well as his report cards from his senior year.”

— Bob, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Image

An image submitted by Lee A. Johnson.

“I attended the 1978 Dylan concert in Atlanta, Ga. I have the ticket stub and the T-shirt from that show. The shirt was originally black, faded from wear. Also it was ‘customized’ with the sleeves cut out by me.”

— Lee A. Johnson, Valdosta, Ga.

“I have an empty bottle of Maker’s Mark whiskey from a show at the Opera House in Boston, during the ‘Oh Mercy’ tour. Dylan was touring with some of his current band and G. E. Smith. I was working as a stagehand, and thought I would meet him. When the crew arrived, I suggested I would like to just say hello and have him sign a copy of ‘Tarantula.’ His [tour] manager said, ‘I’ve been touring with Bob Dylan for 5 years, I’ve never had a conversation with him.’ Oh well. I did get the Maker’s Mark bottle after the show.”